To Penne

Wednesday, April 8, 2009. Today is moving day, and we are packed and ready to go. The couple from whom we rented the Pescara apartment live in the same building, so dropping off the keys is easy. Figlia even gets to interact with the couples’ two young children, after which she declares that there is nothing more cute than four and five year olds speaking Italian . We load up the Fiat and head for Penne, a little town that should be less than an hour’s drive westward into the Abruzzo hills. Now that it is time to leave Pescara we find that we finally know our way around pretty well, and we get on the road to Penne without anxiety or even a U-turn.

The road (Strada Statale 16) winds through the Abruzzo countryside with seemingly nary a straight line. We drive through several little villages whose names are bigger than they are: Ospedale De Cesans, Case Cocciagrassa, Cappella sul Tavo. There are ups and downs a plenty, twists and turns galore, and the numerous hairpin curves have saucer shaped mirrors on the side of the road to help those intent on hurrying to see oncoming traffic. But we are intent on not hurrying, and the countryside rewards our measured pace with glorious views of olive groves, vineyards, distant hills, farm land and villas. Unlike other roads we traveled, SS16 is well marked, and the signs to Penne plentiful.

We arrive in the Penne’s Piazza Luca Da Penne without trouble and even get a parking spot. To get the keys to our rental apartment we have to see the newsstand operator either before 1pm or after 4pm. It’s about 1:30 so we decide to have lunch at a little place right next to the newsstand, My Friends Bar. The food is good enough, and the apparent owner, who waits on our table, speaks good English, and as befits the bar’s name, is a friendly type guy. While talking to him after we have finished our lunch, he offers to try and call the newsstand guy (“giornalista” in Italian) to try and expedite our getting the keys, but though he looks in the phone book and makes a couple of calls on his mobile phone nothing comes of it. We thank him for his effort, then decide to wait in the piazza for our newsstand to open up.

Four o’clock comes and goes, not open yet. No surprise, says Figlia, wise in the Italian ways. Another 30 minutes, nope. Five o’clock, nope. Several would be patrons look in the shuttered windows of the newsstand, then walk on. At 5:30 we decide it’s time to call the apartment’s owner, who lives in the Britain. Using Figlia’s quite wonderful, internationally enabled BlackBerry, Jake rings the owner, who, in a British accent that is always lovely to hear, apologizes, and gives instructions on how to contact the tardy newsstand guy’s mother, who lives right off the piazza.

Jake finds the proper doorway and rings the buzzer, but with an Italian vocabulary that might reach a dozen words on a good day after an espresso or two, he can get no further than “Buona sera” and a mumbled attempt at “giornalista” before he is hopelessly lost. The poor newsstand guy’s mother sounds a little high strung to begin with and is soon frantic with Jake’s inability to speak. Luckily Stone appears at the intercom just in time to calm the waters and straighten things out. Ten minutes later the newsstand guy, Paolo, shows up, gives us our keys and apologizes for being late. He says he thought because of the earthquake we would not show up.

Our 2 BR apartment proves to be well worth the wait and key trouble. It is up a long flight of stairs, and at least two dogs bark at us from behind their apartment doors as we lug our luggage skyward, but the apartment is stylish, modern, newly renovated and quite spacious. Off the dining room is a little terrace that overlooks our street. And from that terrace the rooftop terrace can be gained via a small spiral staircase. The views from the rooftop terrace are magnificent. To the front is a panoramic view of Penne's tiled rooftops and church bell towers. Then behind, over our tiled roof, is a sublime view of the distant, snow covered San Grasso Mountains. Wow.

Later, after we settle in, the distant view is hidden behind clouds and the tiled roofs become shiny slick as the daylight fades and it begins to gently rain. Osteria Del Leone is a restaurant less than two minutes away and provides us with a very nice dinner featuring a wonderful, hardy soup and great tortellini, and of course, a local Montepulciano wine.

Near the end of our dinner an Irish woman, who has been eating there with her husband, approaches us and asks if we are frightened by the continuing tremors of the recent earthquake. We tell her we are not and she seems reassured. However, that night we experience three more tremors. During the last one, as we all three huddled and hugged each other beneath the apartment’s sturdiest doorway at about 3 AM, Stone decides she isn’t comfortable at all with the tremor scene any longer. We decide to abandon Penne and go to Rome or Sicily, or somewhere – somewhere where the earth does not shake. We hope the Irish lady doesn’t see us leaving town in the morning.